Public meets on Kings County land use

A development officer with Kings County, Mandy Burgess (left), speaks with Audrey Stewart of Greenwich while Brian Newcombe listens in. (Heather Desveaux)

A development officer with Kings County, Mandy Burgess (left), speaks with Audrey Stewart of Greenwich while Brian Newcombe listens in. (HEATHER DESVEAUX)

Proposed land use regulations for agriculture, energy and growth areas were the hot topics of conversations — and Post-it notes — at the consultations for the second drafts of the Kings County 2050 Municipal Planning Strategy and Land-use Bylaw.

The Municipality of Kings County is in a third and final phase of the process before adopting its formal policy for future development of 28 types of land use from A to T: agriculture to tidal commercial zones.

Three public meetings were held in Waterville, New Minas and Kingston in mid-September to give residents another opportunity to weigh in.

“Tell us how you think we can change it and what are the changes you’d like to see take place,” said municipal planner Leanne Jennings, who facilitated the town hall in New Minas that was attended by more than 90 people, including Mayor Peter Muttart, councillors and members of the planning advisory committee (PAC).

“Our promise to you is that we will take your ideas and concerns and we will work to find solutions that will balance the needs of all stakeholders in our community,” said Jennings.

Phase 1 involved consulting with stakeholders and Phase 2 used that information to draft the policies. Phase 3 began with gathering public input on the first drafts in 2015 that eventually shaped the second drafts released to the public in the spring of 2016.

Residents have their say at a town-hall style meeting in New Minas as part of the three public consultation sessions there and in Waterville and Kingston. (HEATHER DESVEAUX)

Jennings said much of that initial feedback had been included, but several members of the audience who spoke or commented at the meeting weren’t convinced.

Marilyn Cameron and other representatives of the No Farms No Food group expressed several concerns regarding proposed agricultural land use, echoed by farmers Patricia Bishop and Brian Newcombe.

Cameron said she has been attending farming forums for years about the current land use bylaws, which she says don’t go far enough to protect agricultural land.

“In this (draft), they’ve fixed some things but they’ve opened up a bunch of new loopholes,” Cameron told the Valley Harvester. “They’ve relaxed a lot of the regulations, policies and rules for development and it seems like it’s much weaker for farm protection than the old draft.”

“It’s like the information (we gave them) has been put into a big, deep hole,” said Wolfville resident Elke Willmann as she expressed her frustration. Willmann later said in an interview she was happy with the facilitated town hall format and how Jennings summarized each speaker, indicating “we have been heard,” she said.

“They say it all gets included, but everything has already been done before. It’s like we have to constantly reinvent the wheel,” she said, referring to the 1,000-metre setback for large scale wind turbines that the county removed back in 2012 after public outcry, petitions and consultant’s report about how that distance between homes and the turbines wasn’t sufficient to mitigate health risks.

Willmann and others couldn’t understand why the controversial separation distance was still part of the second draft.

“We’ve been telling the county for five and a half years,” said BettyLou Brown of Gaspereau.

Black Rock’s Warren Peck said to the county’s credit, they included in the public displays the plan he had proposed in 2015, which was to have a separate area in the southwest quadrant of the county on Crown land for the turbines.

Peck told the Valley Harvester he is “cautiously optimistic” his proposal will be adopted. “It can easily be accommodated. There are areas there that are wide open with no roads and no residents,” he said, adding that the province has opened up the leasing of Crown land for wind projects and that the area would be consistent with other large-scale wind projects such as South Canoe.

New Minas village commissioner Dave Chaulk also publicly spoke about his concerns around only New Minas South being designated as a growth area based on the provincial regulator, the Utility and Review Board, approving the expansion of the boundaries for New Minas in addition to government support of the new Granite Drive Highway 101 interchange.

“The entire village should be considered a growth area and the entire village should be open for business,” he said.

A summary consultation report is due to be presented to the PAC in October so that committee can give direction to the municipal planners for changes to the documents. Those will be up for one final public review expected to take place this November.